\chapter{Player responses}
\label{chap:playerResponses}

Several testers were asked to play through at least the first 6 tutorial levels, than continue with other challenges they chose. They had to tell whether they felt the game enjoyable, and what would they add, or change in order, to make it better. Each tester saw an updated version of the program, changed according to the quickly implementable suggestions of previous testers.

All of them reported, that the game in principle was enjoyable, their detailed remarks can be red below, than at the end of the chapter we provide a brief overview of their performance.

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\section{Tester A}

Our first tester was a 24 year old male, casual gamer with no developer background. He sad that he enjoyed the game and suggested the following improvements:

\begin{enumerate}
  \item There should be a penalty system for actions made by the burglar, so a shorter, but in player penalties more expensive path could also be appreciated.
  \item High score list would be a great addition to the game.
  \item Depending on the level difficulty sometimes guards should possess keys to the lockable rooms.
  \item While the game is paused to replan, it should show a notification counting down from the maximal possible planning time towards zero.
  \item After leaving a level, than returning to it, the game should not restore the previous state of the level, especially if the level was already lost.
\end{enumerate}

Requests 1, 3 are under further consideration. They are interesting but they require further user testing. 

Request 5 has been implemented.

Features 2, 4 were added to the future works list.

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\section{Tester B}

The second subject was a 28 year old male, working as a professional game programmer. He enjoyed the game and gave the following remarks:

\begin{enumerate}
  \item The notification window should be more visible on the background.
  \item The cursor on the game area should disappear when the cursor enters a button.
  \item There was a bug on level 3, that made it impossible to solve.
  \item The locked doors should be marked visually.
  \item The levels should have a title instead of a filename.
  \item The ``Show Intent'' button should work even if the agent is moving.
\end{enumerate}

Change requests, that we have implemented, are: 1, 3, 4, 5 (partially implemented, file extension are hidden in the updated version), 6.

Feature 2 gets into the future works.

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\section{Tester C}

The third subject was a 25 year old female, with little game experience. She gave the following remarks:

\begin{enumerate}
  \item When the game is in motion, the viewpoint should center on the burglar and follow him.
  \item There should be no need to explicitly click on the Cancel button in the context menu.
  \item There should be more interesting graphics and background.
\end{enumerate}


Requests 1, 2 were added to the future works, improved graphics would require a larger development team and members with graphics skills.

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\section{Tester D}

The fourth subject was a 27 year old male casual gamer. He gave the following remarks:

\begin{enumerate}
  \item There should be a way to zoom in and out.
  \item Extra player actions would be interesting, for example throwing a banana peal, that is cheaper than dazing the guard, but requires foresight.
  \item It should be visible what the agents are carrying with them.
  \item A random map generator would be useful.
  \item Agents should have viewing angles instead of room level detection.
  \item There should be a way to temporarily immobilize the burglar while the guards move along.
\end{enumerate}

Feature 1, 2, 3, 4 gets into the future works. 2 is particularly interesting, it would greatly improve the gameplay. Request 4 was already in our future works list. The 5. request, to implement viewing angles is hard to implement using planners; we would require a complementary technology accomplish it.

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\section{Tester E}

The fifth subject was a 25 years old male casual gamer with a programming background. He gave the following remarks:

\begin{enumerate}
  \item The red activity indicator on cameras should be more visible even if the image is darkened to symbolize, the burglar does not know about it.
  \item The notification sequences should be skippable.
  \item Don't carry over the speed settings of the last level to the next one, neither should be carried over any opened context menu.
  \item It should be mentioned in the tutorial, that if a guard is dazed, he wont awaken through out the whole level.
\end{enumerate}

Features 3 and 4 has been implemented.

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\section{Tester F}

The sixth subject was a 26 years old female with little gaming experience. She gave the following remarks:

\begin{enumerate}
  \item There is a bug causing plan failure if the agent changes its intentions in a door to return to the previous room.
  \item It would improve the game experience if there would be an always visible control panel for the agent and object interaction.
  \item Entering a new level the screen does not jump to the center of the new map, it stays where we left it on the previous level.
\end{enumerate}

Fixes 1, 3 has been implemented, feature 2 did not seem to be necessary.

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\section{Player performance}

All of our testers managed to solve the tutorial levels. The primary reasons of level restarts were learning of the controls and mistakes caused by lapse of attention. After they had completed the tutorials and understood the available user actions they managed to minimize the restart count. This is partially caused by the character of the game and levels we created both by hand and with the level generator tool.

In our program if discovered in time nearly every dangerous situation can be reverted. Guards and cameras can be turned of even if with great point penalties; the only exception is when the agent gives up every trap in our game can be neutralized. This feature and the levels' modular build allows the players to instinctively break it to subproblems and solve them separately.

According to us the only major difference between the players performance was in the preferred method to solve a level.

Players B and C, F choose a systematic planning approach. They examined the whole map and set up all their changes on the level before letting the agents to perform their plans.

Player A, D and E selected a more interactive approach. They start the command execution and made their changes a few step ahead of the burglar just as it closed on a dangerous situation. The difference between the two strategies was most visible on the 3. tutorial level. Players planning ahead locked the guards into rooms with 3 doors preventing them from interfering with the burglar's plans in any way. This cost them 1200 penalty points. In theory the players delaying their decisions could have solved the level with less changes but at the end they ended up closing more than 6 doors to avoid a collision.




